2013 Monaco Grand Prix

Despite a cloud of innuendo over Mercedes’ test prior to the Monaco Grand Prix weekend, Nico Rosberg’s victory was deemed impressive enough to see him lead the Driver of the Weekend voting for the first time this year.

Adrian Sutil came second after some impressive overtakes and Kimi Raikkonen was voted into third place after his remarkable late-race recovery.

1. Nico Rosberg

Started: 1st
Finished: 1st

Mercedes were tipped as favourites for Monaco even before the details of their clandestine test for Pirelli became public.

Taking pole position is half the battle at Monaco and once Rosberg had done that he never looked back. He ran a very slow pace in the opening laps to nullify his rivals’ strategic options, and weathered a series of interruptions in the race on the way to the second victory of his career.

Easiest decision so far this year. Rosberg.

Fastest in all three free practice sessions, pole position, led every lap of the race on the way to victory. The ideal weekend.

He didn?óÔé¼Ôäót get fazed by the Safety Cars and the red flag period and did a great job at the restarts. He may have been helped a little by the fact that this is Monaco, but you still have to complete the race without making a mistake and he didn?óÔé¼Ôäót. Fully deserved the win and is showing once again how skilled a driver he is.@Magnificent-Geoffrey

Can only be Nico Rosberg for me. Fastest in all practice sessions and led every lap to a well controlled victory.

Perhaps most impressively he took his third pole position in a row against qualifying specialist Vettel in a very quick Red Bull and against qualifying specialist Hamilton in the same machinery. After the last few weekends and in particular this one, I rate Rosberg a lot higher than before.Douglas (@Mwahahaha)

Nico Rosberg never put a tyre wrong all weekend long and at the Monaco GP that can mean the difference between victory or disaster. Some of the best drivers in the history of the sport have been caught out there with the smallest of mistakes that ended in agony. Hats off to Rosberg!@Bullmello

2. Adrian Sutil

Started: 8th
Finished: 5th

Sutil stunned a pair of world champions with brave and expertly-timed passes at Loews hairpin during the race. That left him in the right place to profit from the collision between Sergio Perez and Kimi Raikkonen to claim a strong fifth.

Everyone expected Nico Rosberg to perform well. He had the fastest car in qualifying and he had already set pole on the two previous occasions. He had also had a brilliant Grand Prix in 2012. It wasn?óÔé¼Ôäót difficult for him to start on pole, and then stay first for the whole race.

Sutil is the driver that really surprised me. For a few weeks, he was a bit in the shadow of his team mate, and some began to doubt his performances. Sutil has answered to all his detractors this week-end. He managed to get to Q3, while Di Resta was stuck in Q1.

Starting from eighth position he kept out of trouble, avoiding all the incidents, and then he also managed to make some brilliant passes. The end result: he finished fifth, behind the Red Bulls and the Mercedes, who were way faster than the rest.@Dan_The_Mclaren_Fan

For me it?óÔé¼Ôäós Adrian Sutil. He made several amazing overtaking moves where it?óÔé¼Ôäós almost impossible to overtake and they were very clean, unlike moves, which were done by some other drivers. His 5th place was well deserved and if he qualified higher, he could?óÔé¼Ôäóve fought with the leaders.@Osvaldas31

3. Kimi Raikkonen

Started: 5th
Finished: 10th

Raikkonen had a quiet race to begin with before coming under persistent attack from Perez. Both could have done more to avoid the contact that spoiled both their races but Raikkonen was at least able to continue after a pit stop to replace a punctured tyre. Now came the fireworks: revelling in his grippier rubber he picked off three cars in the last two laps to claim a point.

Kimi Raikkonen. His last lap was the best lap ever driven in Monaco.@Rudi

*of obviously! @deej92 exactly: the only justification seems to be because of those last few laps (on new supersofts against essentially back markers – one of whom actually let him through – on old tyres). Reallyâ€½ DOTWâ€½

I think the obvious reason for this is that when Vettel wins from the start, in the fastest car, it’s almost as if he’s not proving himself. He’ll prove himself as a driver of the weekend when he comes from 10th to win. That’s just the how it is.

When Rosberg comes from pole and leads pretty much every lap to win, it’s special exactly because we don’t see it all the time.

@danbrown how do we explain Alonso then though? You can’t use him starting lower as an excuse for that’s due to his fairly unspectacular qualifying performances. However, his car was undeniably fastest in race trim in Spain for example (not emphatically as was the case with Vettel in Canada, but still fastest).

This is not to say either of them didn’t perform brilliantly though as I personally feel both deserve the title of driver of the weekend in those instances but I’m curious to see how you respond to that…

@danbrown180 funny you’d say that, because I feel exactly the same when Alonso wins by +10 seconds! However, that doesn’t make his race performance any less spectacular, so to me it’s all anti-Vettel sentiment.

Traverse and Monkeys incoming.
In my half-race view, it should have been Perez on third…but, but these two moves on Kimi where enough to decline my vote for him. The second incident was started by kamikaze and finished by another, smaller kamikaze…but Kimi made it up with her massive last stint, it still didn’t made it up for his average race and shouldn’t be on third…yet I voted for him, where I was over excited by these last laps as many others +100% Kimi-fan voters , funny enough.

A bit surprised with seeing RÃ¤ikkÃ¶nen there. Then again, I don’t really recall him any mistakes during the course of the weekend except maybe for the Perez incident – avoidable, sure – but he didn’t really do anything wrong, much like Hamilton in Valencia last year (the Maldonado crash) if I recall correctly but that’s entirely a matter of opinion.

Interestingly, Vettel is the only race winner this year so far who has failed to get over half the votes in any of the events he won. Two almost identical victories: Vettel’s in Bahrain and Alonso’s in Barcelona, only difference being that Alonso was worse in quali, and Vettel gets only half the number of votes Alonso got.

I’m enjoying this new ‘first’ ‘second’ and ‘third’ of the drivers rating, the statistics are really coming along! I can not wait ’till the end of the year when it is all analysed, and a ‘driver of the year’ is crowned along with the bloke who got the least votes during the whole season.

I don’t think Kimi should’ve been there, then again I’m not sure who should.
This is why it’s never good to see a race where no one was able to push, most drivers looked anonymous out there except for the idiots.